A medical device such as an artificial dental root or an artificial hip joint, which is used by being implanted into a living body, is required to have excellent compatibility and high connectivity with the surrounding living tissue in the living body.
Since surface properties of the medical device have a great effect on these characteristics, various surface modification methods of providing desirable shapes and characteristics to a surface of the medical device have been proposed.
For example, in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2002-320667 (Patent Literature 1), a medical device is produce in which a surface of a medical device constituted by a porous metallic body is formed from a porous metal powder sintered to a porous state having countless numbers of pores opened to a surface. Further, in JP-A-2004-141234 (Patent Literature 2), a surface modification method is proposed by which a porous layer made by sintering and combining spherical metal particles is attached to a surface of the main body of a medical device.
Moreover, various surface modification methods, by which a medical device surface modification member having high connectivity with preliminarily formed living tissue is joined to a surface of the main body of a medical device, origin characteristics of a medical device are not damaged, and the high connectivity with the surrounding living tissue is maintained, have been examined. Such medical device surface modification member is disclosed in JP-A-6-7388 (Patent Literature 3), JP-A-7-184987 (Patent Literature 4), JP-A-10-155823 (Patent Literature 5), JP-A-2003-94109 (Patent Literature 6), Japanese Patent Application National Publication (Laid-Open) No. 2002-541984 (Patent Literature 7), and Japanese Patent No. 3445301 (Patent Literature 8).